As anyone who’s ever worked for The Comics Journal will tell you, practicing real journalism will get you blackballed in no time. Specifically: It will get you blackballed by Brian Michael Bendis’ employer in no time.
The response from Bendis? "Paranoia. another excuse."
Really? C'mon. Someone from Marvel's offices have called to threaten sites over bad reviews, let alone unflattering reporting. Rumors say a well-known weekly feature (in a Cup) switched sites in part because they got mad that a creator independently offered up info in an interview (that was run) that the publisher had supplied previously under terms of an embargo.
Thing is: I'm 99.99% certain Bendis knows enough about the stuff that goes on between Marvel & the sites that profit from covering Marvel to know that what Deppey says is NOT paranoia. So he's crossed over into flat out lying.
He could have left it alone, but insisted on addressing it with a false accusation of paranoia. It just gives further support to this being about Bendis wanting long form praise of his work and less instances of snark about it. The way to go about it is putting more of an effort into his work than it appears he currently is, not decrying the work ethic and integrity of everyone else and supporting it with bullshit.
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It seems like Bendis has reached the prima donna diva level of comic book celebrity. I suppose that is to be expected when Marvel does nothing but hype you up with dozens (hundreds maybe?) of articles bought in Wizard magazine over the years telling the public how much of genius, gritty, street level writer with a fresh take on super heroes you are, THEN they make you the defacto architect for most of their line of comics. Don't get me wrong, I think when Bendis applies himself he can do a damn fine job - Ultimate Spidey, Powers, Alias, ummmm, actually that's about it as far as his mainstream comics go, I couldn't stand his Avengers books, but i do like his older stuff such as Torso. It seems like he's wanting his work to be regarded as the next Watchmen or All Star Superman, but his stuff is no where near that level of quality. His best hope for a beloved fan favorite run right now is Ultimate Spidey, but that's never going to be a Moore's Swamp Thing or Giffen & Demattis JLI because it's nothing but his (admittedly enjoyable) take on rehashed ideas from the past. It sounds like he won't be happy until the internet is sucking his proverbial dick and that won't happen except on sites that Marvel buys articles on.
ReplyDeleteAnd speaking of the black listing aspect of it, I think it's completely BS that any company would find it easier to black list a site rather than have an open discourse with them, but it sucks even harder that websites are so afraid of being black listed that they won't speak honestly about the company's projects. Bendis knows this is the way things work, he would have to be the most naive person on the face of the planet if he thought otherwise, so yeah, he is not being honest when he calls it paranoia.
Also: for all the praise he gets for his style of dialogue, it has devolved into a making him seem like a total one trick pony to me. While it worked amazingly in Goldfish, Powers, and Alias, it is gratingly annoying in his Avengers books - so much so that it has effectively turned me off of trying out his newer stuff because I just don't enjoy that style anymore.
Also Also: Not to beat a dead horse but he put Wolverine on the Avengers, which was the absolute most moronic, only done to please corporate, sell-out idea ever. Boo. Hiss.
Marvel doesn't punish people?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.schwapponline.com/2010/04/mr-anonymous-reveals-2010-winner-of.html
As was noted in the above article here from April: They yanked advanced pdfs for review to the entire online comics journalism and blogging community because one dipshit retailer smoked the embargo.
Bendis has no leg to stand one. That's just ONE example of Marvel playing hardball, and it happens to be one where they screwed with all the journalists when they didn't even do anything.
Imagine what it would be like if they did.